March 20, 2023
Cuban doctor working in remote area of Brazil
The Brazilian government relaunched on Monday ‘Mais Médicos’ (More Doctors), a program created during the administration of the leftist Dilma Rousseff to alleviate the lack of health professionals in poor and isolated areas, and which was neglected by the former ultra-right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who was hostile towards the participation of Cuban doctors.
In a ceremony at the presidential Planalto Palace in Brasilia, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced additional resources for this program, which he said had been “extraordinarily successful” in the past, because it was essential for the inhabitants of the urban favelas, remote Amazonian municipalities or small and medium-sized cities in the interior of the South American giant to be attended with dignity by the public health system.
Officially, it will be renamed ‘More Doctors for Brazil’, and will cover 96 million Brazilians (almost half the population) and will more than double the number of professionals, from 13,000 to 28,000. Currently, it has 18,000 vacancies, but 5,000 are vacant, as many professionals are not interested in their remote destinations.
The doctors who sign up will sign on for 4 years, renewable for an equal period, and will receive a series of benefits with which the government intends to use to encourage their permanence for long periods, such as substantial improvements in their economic conditions after the first years.
The program will cost the state coffers 712 million reais (about US$ 135 million) this year.
Bolsonaro against Cuba
‘Mais Médicos’ was the target of much criticism from the Brazilian right wing, especially from Bolsonaro and his allies, because thanks to a partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (OPAS) it included thousands of foreign doctors, many of them from Cuba, a country that has a powerful export sector of health professionals to other countries.
On repeated occasions, the former president, an avowed enemy of Latin American leftist governments, questioned the professionalism of the Caribbean island’s doctors during his term in office and claimed that the program served to finance the communist government, which, according to him, kept a large part of the doctors’ salaries.
Before taking office in January 2019, but already as president-elect, Bolsonaro announced that he would impose conditions if the Cuban doctors wanted to remain in Brazil, which prompted the government of the island to announce the exit of the program and the withdrawal of 11,000 health professionals then working in Brazil.
Some of them remained in Brazil and, according to the local press, some were readmitted by the government. The former president tried to create his version of the program, but it never materialized, nor did he extinguish the original one launched by the Rousseff government in 2013.
“They sold a negative image”
“They tried to do away with ‘Mais Médicos’, they sold a negative image in a pejorative way and did not even apologize to the Cuban doctors who left this country,” Lula declared.
The president assured that the priority of this program will be doctors trained in Brazil, but that if necessary, foreigners will be hired.
“We want all doctors who register to be duly trained Brazilians. If not, we will give opportunity to Brazilians trained abroad or foreigners working in Brazil. If there are still none, we will call foreign doctors to take on this task,” he assured.
“What matters is not knowing the nationality of the doctor, but the nationality of the patient, who is a Brazilian in need of care,” he added.
Source: Cuba en Resumen